Interview with an orangutan conservationist

As some of you may already know, I am a huge primate fan and a particular one of the orangutan, so I'm pretty excited about this interview with someone who works with these guys up close and personal in Indonesian Borneo!


1. What is your name and job?

Stephen Brend, Senior Conservationist, Orangutan Foundation.

2. What do you actually do on a day-to-day basis?

I spend way too much time behind my desk writing reports, checking budgets and preparing grant proposals. However, I try to get into the field once a week to either check on the Release Camps, Guard Posts or the progress of our reforestation project. If there are any visiting researchers here I always try to spend some time with them. A couple of times a month I will go to the Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine facility. Depending on the season, I may also be called upon to show visitors around, give interviews to journalists of assist with film crews.

3. What does most of the rest of the local staff of the Orangutan Foundation do?

We have over 70 local staff members.

• The majority are field assistants who monitor the rehabilitated orangutans.
• Next come guard post staff. We support three posts in Tanjung Puting National Park and five in the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Each post has two to three staff members whose job is to stop people entering the protected areas illegally.
• We have scientific field assistants who work with visiting researchers as well as staff specifically assigned to reforestation projects.
• At the managerial level each camp has a ‘wakil’ or supervisor; there are guard post supervisors and the Information Centre supervisor who works in Camp Leakey.
• The Research Station has its own manger, Devis.
• Tigor is in charge of the five release camps and Uduk is his Deputy.
• A man called Jak manages the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve guard posts and patrols.
• Communication, negotiation and planning with local and central government are coordinated by our Liaison Officer, Mrs Astri.
• I have an Indonesian counterpart, Bhayu, who helps me in hundreds of big ways and thousands of small ones.
• We are all backed up by boat and car drivers.
• Last, but by no means least, comes Uli our Office and Finance Manager without whom truly very little would get done!

4. How much time do you spend working directly with the orangutans?

Nowhere near enough! I think I can honestly claim to see orangutans every week, unless it is a particularly bad week in the office. If I wanted to I could see them every day at the Care Centre, which receives orphaned, confiscated or infant orangutans but I much prefer to see them free ranging at the Release Camps, or best of all wild in the forest.

5. I know one of the greatest threats to orangutan's survival is the erosion of their habitat. Can you tell me what your organization is doing to combat this problem?

The Orangutan Foundation believes conservation need not be complicated – it is simply a matter of saving habitat. We do this directly through fire-fighting and the guard posts and patrols in Tanjung Puting National Park and Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Indirectly we work on coalition building, working with other foreign and local NGOs, government bodies and, where necessary, commercial interests such as timber companies. Some of the areas in which we work include:

Belantikan: Working with an Indonesian partner organisation YAYORIN, we have begun the first ever conservation work in the Belantikan Hulu Region of Central Kalimantan – home to the largest population of orangutans outside of a protected area. The Belantikan region is threatened by unsustainable logging, mining and conversion to oil palm.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Livelihoods – The Foundation encourages the development of environmentally friendly employment and income generating opportunities, to lessen the demands local people make on the forest.

Rehabilitation and Release - Releasing orangutans provides a tangible reason to argue for increased protection for the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve’s threatened forests.

6. What can readers of this interview do to help your efforts?

I would encourage everyone to write to their local supermarket manager, or even better the CEO of a supermarket chain, to urge them to join the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (www.sustainable-palmoil.org). The RSPO is the only body pushing for green-labeling/certification of palm-oil production something which is urgently needed as the conversion of rainforest to oil palm plantations is the greatest single threat to orangutan habitat. In the UK, palm oil is found in 10% of all supermarket products and demand for the oil is set to increase.

7. What is the best part of your job?

The variety. My job is a mix of physical work – trekking in the forest -- and brain work - conservation planning. There are small, interesting science projects, hands-on work with orangutans and, overall, enough field time. Truly, I never get bored.

8. What is the most difficult part of your job?

Coping with the depressing sense of two steps forward, one back. I know for every tree we save, another one is lost somewhere.

9. How many jobs have you held in your lifetime?

About a dozen – mostly awful ones done as a student or to support me while volunteering. In “career” terms I have taken part in an expedition to Kenya, worked on conservation projects in Nigeria and the Middle East and run a small primate and welfare conservation charity in the UK.

Visit Stephen's blog if you want to learn more about his work with the orangutans. If you're feeling sporty, throw him a donation so he and the rest of the team there can continue their work!